Ellen Crosby - The Chardonnay Charade

“He’s right,” I said. “But don’t tell me you’re thinking of burning tires for heat. The smudge pots give off enough of a smokescreen. Tires are nasty. Plus they smell disgusting.”

I was getting to know that look Quinn gave me whenever I questioned his judgment or a decision. Strained patience, fake smile. Incredulous stare like looking into my eyes would be a clear view to the back of my head.

“Tires,” he said carefully, “burn really, really hot. We used ’em in California before we installed wind turbines. We can stack piles of three around the perimeter of the Chardonnay and Riesling blocks. The fire’s gonna be contained, so it’s not like a bonfire. No worries about it getting out of control or the vines catching fire. And it’s the only choice we have right now. Unless you got a bunch of pairs of wings stashed somewhere.”

“Very funny. But the smoke—” I began.

“Will save the grapes.” He unhooked his car keys from a thick lanyard attached to his belt. “Look, sweetheart, nobody burns tires for fun. But you know as well as I do that in agriculture, you can be wiped out in a night. So what do you want to do? Either we can all go to bed or we can save the damn grapes.”

I looked at Hector, who was intently fingering the brim of his stained John Deere baseball cap. He had been through every one of our harvests since my parents planted the first vines. Hector adored my mother, whose great instincts, personal charm, and savvy marketing skills had put us on the map as a young vineyard with a promising future. When she died and my father took over, he’d gradually run it up on the rocks, wiping out nearly everything she’d built. I wanted to restore the place and put it back on the path she had charted. Hector knew that and understood the emotions tangled in what I was trying to do in a way that Quinn never would.

Hector pulled on his cap and met my eyes, watching me steadily. My mother would have saved the vines.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll burn tires, but we are really scraping the bottom of the environmental barrel right now. The rest of Atoka would go nuclear if they knew. And let’s not even talk about the EPA.”

“Hell, I want to save the earth, too.” Quinn sounded mad. “Doesn’t everybody? Unfortunately, the choices aren’t always black and white. That’s why they have those global conferences on the environment so people can figure out ways other countries ought to shape up before they go home and do what they damn well please.”

“Well, then Kit’s right. Someday Alaska is going to be a tropical beach resort,” I said. “So just how many tires are we talking about?”

“If we do this, we better do it right. I’d say a hundred,” he said, ignoring my shocked expression. “We also need to create some artificial wind. If we get the two tractors out there with the sprayers and turn the regulators on without opening the nozzles, that ought to work.”

I had never actually seen anyone burn tires, though I’d read about them being used as alternative fuel at cement kilns and paper mills. Hector and Manolo took care of the fires, dumping diesel fuel on the tires and then throwing lit books of matches at them. César and Jesús manned the tractors and sprayers, turning on the regulators to create high-pressure fans with enough force to blow your clothes off six rows away. Quinn and I stayed clear in the Mini, monitoring the sensors as we had done the night before.

It didn’t take long for everything inside the fire ring—including us—to be coated in a viscous cloud of black smoke. As the orange flames licked the blue-black sky, the tractor headlights cut white swaths through the gritty darkness and silhouetted the rows of nearly bare vines twisted like supplicants. The overpowering stench of burning rubber filled the air as the tires sizzled and dissolved. We could have been in hell, except for the cold.

Funny thing was, tonight I didn’t feel the frigid temperature. The urgency of what we were doing, keeping the fires stoked and the sprayers aimed at the vines to prevent the grapes from freezing, crowded out everything else in my mind. We worked feverishly, mostly in silence.

By the end of the night, I had soot in my lungs, my nostrils, and under my eyelids. It penetrated my clothing and coated my skin. Quinn and I looked like a pair of coal miners. We were checking thermometers in the Chardonnay block when he said, “I wonder who else was out here besides us last night.”

“Any ideas?” I asked. “Who do you think did it?”

He looked away. Then he said softly, “In a way I feel like I did. I should have made sure that stuff was put away. I’m sorry, Lucie, I really am.”

Apologies didn’t come easily to him. My anger melted. “It’s okay. It happened. There’s nothing we can do about it now. But I feel the same about being responsible. The only time we didn’t lock something in the chemical shed…”

“Dammit, after I finished talking to Chris when he showed up with the helicopter I should have gone back and moved those canisters. Instead I went home and crashed for a few hours because I knew it would be an all-nighter. I was beat.” He sounded beat now, too.

“Kit said whoever killed her would have found another way to do it,” I said. “This wasn’t an accident. Someone really went after her.”

“I didn’t like Georgia, but she didn’t deserve to die like that. I hope the cops nail whoever did it,” he said.

“Me, too.”

“Hey,” he said after a moment. “Look at this.” He shone a flashlight on one of the thermometers.

“Twenty-eight degrees,” I said. “Colder than last night.”

“I know. But look at the grapes.”

I looked. “Nothing’s frozen.”

He smiled tiredly for the first time all night, his teeth gleaming white against gritty black skin. “At least we got something right. I think we pulled it off.”

“Thank God. How much longer do we have to keep the fires going? That smell is revolting and we’re almost out of tires.”

“Probably another hour. Until around five.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “Come on. You’ve been limping the past hour. You need to get off that foot.”

“I have not been limping. I’m fine.”

I stumbled and his arm tightened around me. “Don’t argue, and get back in the car.”

I obeyed while he went to talk to Hector. He was right about my foot. The skin was scraped raw where the deformed bones had rubbed against my heavy mud boots.

As Quinn predicted, we stopped burning tires by five, meaning the small pyres died down well before the sun came up. By six the heavy smoke had become a grimy haze, and by seven-thirty the dirty-gauze filminess—the last vestiges of what we’d done—had evaporated completely. Only the piles of steel belts and a few smoldering ashes gave any clue to what had happened in the dark.

The windshields of Hector’s pickup and the dump truck César had borrowed were ice-coated, but inside the firewall perimeter nothing had frozen. Quinn paid Manolo, César, and Jesús double overtime from a thick envelope of cash in the El’s glove compartment and they left, tired but slapping-each-other-on-the-back happy.

“Go home and get some rest,” I said to Hector. “We’ll clean up from the fire tomorrow. I mean, today. I mean, later. God, I’m tired.”

“We also got to take the plastic tarps off those new fields,” he said. “Ought to be done today.”

“Get some sleep first,” I said. “You look exhausted. We’re all exhausted.”

He touched a sooty hand to his heart. “I am old, chiquita, ” he said. “I am worn out. This is work for a young person. It is time for someone else to take my place.”

“No one can take your place, Hector. Go on, now,” I said gently. “We’ll talk about it another time.”